So, yesterday and today were organization days. Yesterday I found all the old copies of the manuscript that I had laying around my office, and typed in all the comments written into the margins. I put various versions inside '[ ]' so I can figure out later which version I want, but now I know they are all in one place and recorded.

And today, after a trip out to the office store to buy binders, I printed out the newest copy of the manuscript, punched it, and put it in a binder. And printed out the copy of the flow chart I made when I finally realized the book didn't have a plot, all 10 pages of it, and taped it together into a 2x5 grid. Then I went to work on all the stacks of notes I had around. There weren't that many notes, but what I had wasn't the least bit organized. I also printed off blank copies of character sheets for all the major characters and put them all into separate tabs in the reference binder. Then new copies of my research files. (Did you know "off-white" wasn't a name for a color until the 1930's? I didn't.) By the time I was done I had to switch to a bigger binder. But now everything is in one place.

And in the process of all this, I realized why everything was in such a mess... this wasn't supposed to be a "real" book... it was supposed to be a bit of blow-off writing to get the heroine to shut-the-hell-up so I could think about my other books. 

*sigh* Well, that explains a bunch of stuff. You know... I really wish I wouldn't take quite so long to figure some of this stuff out. But, I guess I need to give myself credit for figuring it out, and figuring out how to fix it.

So, tomorrow is a continuation of organization. All the notes for each character are in tabs of a binder, but now I have to condense them all onto the character sheets, so I can actually find stuff when I go looking for it. Then I have to go through my stack of plotting notes, and fill out the plot chart that I made for DucKon (you'd think that if I went to all the work to make it that I'd use it... but this wasn't a "real" book so I didn't need a plot chart *sigh*). Once that's done, I need to go back through that stack of notes and make sure all the important stuff is on the flow chart.

And... once all that is done, then I can get to work on... jeez! I don't know what to call it... a "concept edit"? Anyway, it's a complete work through the manuscript, making notes in the margins that this plot point needs to go here and needs to be foreshadowed there and there. So I don't know the words that are going to go into making that happen, but I know what needs to happen in each scene in order to make the plot work itself out.

Only when that is all done can I go back to worrying about the actual words that make up the story, because only then will I know what needs to be covered in each scene.

It would have been so much easier if this had been a "real" book, and I'd included a plot from the beginning... trying to stuff one in once it's written is a pain.